Chris Grythen, Getty ImagesRapper Lil Wayne, left, accompanied by co-founder of Cash Money Records Bryan Williams, attends the game between the New Orleans Hornets and the Miami Heat at the New Orleans Arena Friday.

Once upon a time, Wayne was a courtside regular at Hornets games. But the competing demands of a stratospheric career and the law have preoccupied him of late.

As Wayne and his entourage first settled into $1,200 front-row, baseline seats near the visiting team’s basket on Friday, Cortez Bryant, Wayne’s mild-mannered, bespectacled manager, confided to a reporter his desire for their presence to be “discrete.”

But when the world’s most famous, and infamous, rapper steps out in public after eight months in prison, folks notice.

Regardless of his worth, or lack thereof, as a role model, no New Orleanian of recent vintage has impacted pop culture with such force. His omnipresent celebrity was undiminished by his just-concluded hiatus within the New York penal system.

Since his Thursday morning release from Rikers Island prison, websites from MTV to TMZ have breathlessly reported his every move. President Obama revealed in Rolling Stone that Lil Wayne is on his iPod. In October, Wayne’s latest CD, “I Am Not a Human Being,” recorded before his incarceration, hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

Chris Granger/The Times-PicayuneLil Wayne watches the New Orleans Hornets play the Miami Heat on Friday night at the New Orleans Arena. At right is Bryan 'Baby' Williams, co-founder of Cash Money Records.

Last year, Wayne pled guilty to a weapons charge stemming from a loaded handgun police found on his tour bus following a 2007 New York concert. He entered Rikers Island in March. He served his last month in solitary confinement, after contraband -- a digital music charger and headphones – was found in his cell.

Wayne rolled out of jail Thursday aboard a luxury Maybach automobile (retail value: $300,000). He spent Thursday night in a New York hotel.

On Friday morning, he and his crew boarded a jet for Yuma, Ariz., where Wayne signed paperwork related to his probation for a 2008 drug charge. (While in jail in New York, he copped a plea in the Arizona case via video.)

Their business in Yuma complete, Team Weezy flew to New Orleans and sped directly to the New Orleans Arena. They arrived at the Hornets-Heat game just before halftime.

Wayne sat at the end of the front row, shielded from passers-by. He laughed when the arena’s “dance cam” projected him on overhead video screens, but declined to boogie.

Relaxed and restrained, the normally loquacious rapper offered only brief answers during an impromptu courtside chat. He planned to resume “living life” even as the stringent conditions of his probation require he “live life the right way.” Being in public after eight months of lockdown felt “like I never left.”

What did he think of the Hornets? “The best is yet to come.”

He harbors similar ambitions for himself.

***

Bryan Williams and his brother Ronald “Slim” Williams founded Cash Money Records in New Orleans in the early 1990s. The bald, compact Bryan is both a businessman and a rapper known alternately as Baby and Birdman. The towering, soft-spoken Slim prefers to stay behind the scenes and run the business that has generated tens of millions of dollars.

They first signed Wayne to a contract when he was barely in his teens, and functioned as his surrogate fathers. Wayne is now the face of Cash Money, even as he’s formed his own label, Young Money Records, which has produced a star in Drake, a child actor-turned-rapper.

In the coming weeks, Wayne plans to finish “Tha Carter IV,” the follow-up to his Grammy-winning “Tha Carter III,” the best-selling album of 2008. The stakes are high.

A prison sentence, by and large, is not beneficial to a music career. An artist who cannot promote himself and earn money on the road is at a distinct disadvantage. The million-selling rapper and actor T.I. more or less disappeared during his year-long incarceration on a gun charge. His career clearly suffered.

“It was smart thinking on our part,” Slim Williams said, standing just off the New Orleans Arena floor during Friday’s game. “I’ve always got to think ahead. I knew he was going to be away for eight months. I watched T.I.’s situation, and I didn’t want that to happen. It felt like (Wayne) was still out here.”

AP PhotoLil Wayne is handcuffed in a New York City courtroom on March 8, 2010, after being sentenced to a year in jail for having a loaded gun on his tour bus in 2007. He served eight months, and was released on Thursday, Nov. 4.

Prison did not demoralize his superstar charge.

“He’s not affected,” Williams said. “He made the best that he could of it. He did his time, he did his due, and he’s just living his life, picking up where he left off, and having fun. Life is fun. You’ve got to make the best of it.”

Slim, for one, was ecstatic to have Wayne back. “I’m overwhelmed that he’s home. He’s special to me. We raised him. It’s a great thing that we could have him back. We’ve been praying all these months. God always makes our dreams come true.”

A probation violation recently sent T.I. back to prison for 11 more months. The misstep has jeopardized the rollout of his next album. Williams does not anticipate a similar relapse for Wayne.

“He’s straight. He’s very smart. He knows what he’s got to do and what he don’t have to do. He’s not going to make the same mistakes. And he’s got great people around him, family and friends. We’re going to all make sure. We’re all on the same page.

“We’re going to represent New Orleans the way it’s supposed to be. Music, we got that. We’re going to represent it well.”

Miami is now the Cash Money crew’s base of operations, but they still maintain homes in New Orleans and frequently commute back and forth. “I don’t care where we at – our heart is here,” Williams said. “We’ll never leave. We love this place. This is our home. This is where we come up.”

During his hometown stopover this weekend, Wayne planned to see family and friends, and eat. Immediately following his release, some undoubtedly expensive steaks were consumed in New York.

“But we about to get some real food” in New Orleans, Slim said. “We know where the real food’s at.”

In the coming weeks, they may stage both private and public homecoming events for Wayne in New Orleans. He may also return for the Williams brothers’ annual charity Thanksgiving turkey giveaway.

“I’m going to sit down and talk to him,” Slim said. “It’s fresh right now. We haven’t even talked about nothing. Just ‘love you.’ Right now we just want to have fun.

“He loves basketball and wanted to come see the game. So we all jumped on some jets and came here.”

***

As the Hornets-Heat game wound down, the score remained close. Much of the crowd stood through the tense final minutes. Wayne stayed seated, his head resting on his hands, watching intently from behind sunglasses.

As the buzzer sounded and the Hornets celebrated, Wayne and his 12-man entourage immediately exited via a passageway between the bleachers that led to the bowels of the arena.

A female arena usher, middle-aged and about Wayne’s height, detained him for a long embrace. The rapper breezed past a trio of young girls wearing red “Lil Wayne for President” T-shirts; daughters of a high-ranking Hornets executive, they’d been tipped off that Wayne might be at the game.

Cruising through the loading dock area, Wayne paused for a picture with a young boy who found himself in the exact right place at the right time. Arena personnel directed Wayne and company through a metal detector in a hallway leading to the team lockers. The institutional cinder block walls and florescent lights may well have reminded the rapper of the temporary New York home where he just served eight months.

He and his inner circle disappeared into a vacant production office near the visiting team’s locker room. Because the referees’ locker room was nearby, NBA and arena security allowed only three of Wayne’s bodyguards to stand outside his door.

Just up the hall, a scrum of reporters interviewed Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. Players passed with their own entourages.

Earlier, just before the start of the third quarter, Hornets point guard Chris Paul gave Wayne a quick courtside embrace. Now, carrying a small boy, he ducked into the room where the rapper held court.

Finally, just after 10 p.m., Wayne emerged to a waiting crowd – Hugo, the Hornets’ mascot, still in costume; the well-connected young girls in the “Lil Wayne for President” T-shirts; assorted ushers, security guards and members of the media.

His entourage proceeded to the loading dock, where a cluster of fans beckoned from behind a barricade. Outside the arena, Wayne took the lead in his familiar, loping gait. Maybe it was the cool night air, or the Hornets’ victory, or the thrill of being amongst friends -- or any human being -- after a month in solitary confinement, but his step had regained its swagger.

Beyond the team buses, three hired black GMC Yukons idled. As more fans called out for Wayne and Baby Williams, the rappers piled into the lead Yukon with the practiced nonchalance of men accustomed to screaming crowds.

The convoy made a U-turn through post-game traffic and escaped around the backside of the arena, immediate destination unknown.

As the world’s most infamous rapper goes about “living life,” the spotlight will follow. On Saturday, Nov. 6, his crew planned to jet to Las Vegas to make a “surprise” appearance at Drake’s tour-ending concert. On Sunday, Nov. 7, they were due back in Miami for a lavish party meant to officially welcome Lil Wayne back.

But on Friday, however briefly, he was already home.

Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicyune.com or 504.826.3470.